The JamesSuckling.com team tasted more than 2,100 wines from Australia in 2024, spending over seven months in the country exploring all its major wine regions and tasting widely through the 2022 and 2023 vintages along with a few highly anticipated releases from 2021.
The 2022 and 2023 vintages faced the full range of what this diverse and temperate continent offers to viticulture, from drought in Western Australia to the cooler and wetter weather patterns brought by La Niña across the whole of southeastern Australia. Comparing vintages in Australia can be challenging given the constantly changing conditions, but the similarities between 2023 and 2011 were clear. The Margaret River region, for instance, escaped cold, wet weather in 2023 and enjoyed a dry, nearly ideal growing season. This is the opposite of what happened in the southeastern coastal region, which faced cold, wet and difficult conditions – mirroring what transpired in 2011, a year that was almost written off in the southeast while Margaret River experienced nearly perfect conditions.
The wines from 2022 and 2023 mostly offer purity and finesse, marking a stylistic shift toward balance and poise and away from ripeness and power. Wine styles worth exploring range from the fruit-forward and subtle pinot noirs of Tasmania's 2022 vintage to the precise, laser-focused chardonnays from the east coast's 2023 vintage, as well as the lively, fragrant, and elegant grenaches from McLaren Vale. There is a wealth of style and value to discover across the country from both years.